A covert attempt to bring back the attainability of Banksy trinkets in an age of bourgeois auction house gentrification.

A: Subverting the street art industry from within?

B: Capturing the essence of what gives graffiti its edge over other art forms; complete transience and lack of entrance fees?

C: A low level promotional stunt?

D: Conceptual brilliance?

No answers to be found here, other than to say giving away some art sounded like fun.

A total of two hundred artworks were dropped randomly in two different cities, in the dead of two separate nights, in the final two weeks leading up to the site launch of April 1st 2009.

An edition of uniquely numbered, limited and hand painted art has never been given away on this scale before, and certainly not left for the streets to reclaim. Until now. (That's not to say that this precedent won't be broken at a future point, plagiarism seems to be rife...)

100 hand painted artworks on canvas. Signed and numbered on the rear.Randomly placed around the capital.Free.

Phase TwoThe Bristol Edition

100 hand painted artworks on keeping it real cardboard. Signed and numbered on the rear.Randomly placed around the capital of the South West.Free.

Phase ThreeAll New Bristol Edition

An edition of 50 hand painted, hand signed and numbered artworks, handed out radomly to people waiting in line outside Bristol Museum on the opening day of the Banksy Show.

This bought the running total of free original artworks given away by the ephemeral one project to:

100 London Edition100 Bristol Edition1 Andipa's Window 10 The Red
Cross 50 Bristol Museum Banksy Show Queue1 Subversion Ouroboros Sign (In fairness this was less of a giveaway, more a return of stolen property.)

=262

Which also brings the running total of proceeds seen by the ephemeral one project to:

£0.00(Unsurprisingly then, Apple, Nike or LAZ Inc are yet to get in touch.)

And then, this happened:

Phase FourBristol

More than forty unique pieces were dropped in and around Bristol the weekend after the opening of Banksy Vs. Bristol Museum back in June 2009.